o the much talked about ‘Ghana Meets Naija’ concert happened last Friday, July 1 at the Dome of the Accra International Conference Centre and it was clear that if indeed it was a competition then Ghana won by a huge margin. Apart from the obvious home advantage, there were more Ghanaian acts on the bill than their Nigerian counterparts. And to make it worse, most of the Ghanaian acts on the bill currently have hits that the crowd wanted to see them perform unlike the Nigerian bunch. With that said, it wasn’t surprising that Naeto C was the only Nigerian act that scored on the night with his ‘10/10’ hit song.

9ice put up a good performance but aside ‘Congo Aso’ and “Street Credibility’, the crowd wasn’t familiar with most of the other songs and of course those two songs are at least two years old! 2face was great as always with his live band performance but it was as if the crowd had seen it all before and he came on stage pretty late; people were just tired at that point. And why wouldn’t they be tired after watching J Martins almost drag the show to a halt? J Martins has received a lot of stick for what is being termed the worst performance on the night and at a point some members of the crowd were booing him off the stage. I personally didn’t find his performance too terrible apart from his ‘bad start’, when it was obvious that he wasn’t in his elements. He started singing but kept pausing, staring in the skies and talking to his bandsmen.

Anyway through seeing the usually suave Paedae of R2bees dressed ‘off’ for the first time in weird pants; Kwaw Kesse appearing on stage in a box; Sarkodie performing with his protégée Awal; Emmanuel Adebayor making it rain on a dancer; and football stars dancing on stage, I have compiled my top odd highlights of the night.

(I don’t really know how to describe this dress but I think it’s Kaba!) So at some stage in the show, a dancing competition was staged to find out the girl who could move best to Sakodie’s hit song, ‘U Go Kill Me’. Surprisingly, this girl dressed in Kaba thought she had what it takes to dance like a vixen despite the obviously missing semblance to one. She made a complete fool of herself when she displayed dance moves that wouldn’t even make it to a club in ‘Mangoasi’. She even made a further clown of herself when she rashed to pick up money from the stage when football stars Emmanuel Adebayor showered money on the eventual winner of the competition.

Captain Planet, group member of hiplife trio, 4×4 attempted to ‘bring sexy back ‘on a Ghanaian stage like never before when he took off his shirt during the performance of their buzzing single, ‘Waist and Power’. Well he didn’t exactly reveal a body like that of 50 Cent but he wasn’t completely out of shape; a little flabby on the sides but hey who am I to talk about fitness? Captain Planet took it a step further when he unbuckled his belt and decided to touch himself a bit on stage. What was he thinking?

Seeing a fat man with ----- dancing and shaking his bum on stage was an awkward moment that certainly made whatever Captain Planet did on stage pardonable. The man (I ‘m told is a comedian) came to dance for hiplife duo, Ruff N Smooth. Now I know dancing isn’t a total workout plan!

2. Come sit on my laps!

If seeing Togolese international football star Emmanuel Adeboyor dancing and showering money on the night did not stand out enough for you then picture him sitting on the laps of former Ghana Black Stars captain, Stephen Appiah. Yes, when Adebayor arrived at the venue, the VIP seats were all occupied and so he decided to sit on the laps of Appiah until the organizers finally brought him a seat.

The topmost odd moment for me had to be when Stephen Appiah grabbed actor John Dumelo to tango with him on stage. The actor and football stars including Sulley Muntari, Dede Ayew, John Paintsil, Laryea Kingson, Emmanuel Adebayor and Prince Tagoe had been called on stage to show their dance skills. Appiah in an attempt to avoid dancing, grabbed John Dumelo to waltz about a bit until it was obvious he didn’t want to dance and the DJ killed the music.

Certainly there were lots of talking points at the Ghana Meets Naija concert making it a total entertainment package although not necessarily planned as such.